We were at Xian airport waiting for the flight to Nanking. After about a couple of hours we were told to get on to a flight that had arrived a few minutes earlier. All seven of us were bundled into it in a jiffy. While we were settling down Pat Kearney, our consultant, told me that the flight we were on was in fact the one that flew between Xian and Shanghai.

As a day's
delay would have upset our schedule the Chinese authorities decided
to put us on this flight which was made to make an unscheduled halt
at Nanking. This was another instance of Chinese state power and it
also showed the keenness Chinese to make a success of the month-long
visit of the UPU delegation. They didn't obviously want any flap.
After all, their international reputation, especially with the UN
agencies, was at stake. Whether in the process some passengers were
offloaded at Xian is not known to me. An hour and a few minutes later
we were at Nanking.

In
Focus

Located in the South-East of
Xian, Nanking has been prominent in Chinese history, having been its
capital on several occasions. It was capital during the reign of the
first emperor of the Ming dynasty in the 14th Century.
Later rulers of the same dynasty relocated the capital to Beijing in
the 15th Century. In the 17th Century the Ming
Dynasty brought the capital back again to Nanking. In the 19th
Century it became the capital of the Taiping Kingdom and was known as
Tianjing. The city saw on several occasions the capital being moved
out and moved in.

The establishment of the
Chinese Republic in 1912 under the Presidency of Dr. Sun Yat Sen (a
name we were familiar with in India), after what is known as the
Xinhai Revolution, saw Nanking becoming the capital yet again. Later
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang (KMT) made Nanking
his capital in 1927.

A decade later, sometimes
called the Nanking Decade, Nanking was invaded by Japanese troops
commencing the Second Sino Japanese War that had seeds in it of World
War II. In 1949 the People’s Republic of China of Mao Tse-tung
overran Nanking and drove out Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT forces
ending its role as the capital of the country. Quite a chequered
history for the city!

Nanking had seen tumultuous
times in the 19th Century when the Taiping Rebellion raged
in and around it for several years. The rebellion was against the
Qing Dynasty that was ruling China at the time. The conflict saw
avoidable loss of large number of innocent lives. There was a repeat
of the same kind of bloodshed in 1937 when the Japanese invaded the
country and were reported to have put hundreds of thousand of
innocent Chinese to death. Visuals of are available of Japanese
soldiers describing the way they were ordered to kill innocent
Chinese.

Nanking hosts one of the
most beautiful monuments dedicated to one of its great leaders, Dr
Sun Yat-sen. A medical doctor who later became a revolutionary
fighting against the Imperial Qing Dynasty, Dr. Sun was instrumental
in ending the monarchy after the revolution of 1911. He was made the
Provisional President of the new republic with the capital at
Nanking.

Reckoned as the “Father of
the Nation” and one of the greatest leaders of modern China, Dr.
Sun, however, had a life of constant struggle and frequent exiles –
a life that is the fate of all revolutionaries. No wonder a
remarkably massive memorial has been built in one of the most
beautiful sites in China on the slopes of a hill.

The mausoleum
blends the traditional architecture with the modern. One has to go up
around 400 steps to get to the vault. The steps are dozens of metres
wide on both sides of which are pine and cypress trees. It is a
beautiful sight and the parks and gardens are very well maintained.

The Memorial itself is an
edifying sight, easily one of the finest tourist sites I ever
happened to visit. It was crowded with visitors, mostly local and the
ubiquitous People’s Liberation Army soldiers with cameras in hand.

Among other ancient
monuments Nanking has is the tomb of founder of the Ming Dynasty.
Situated a little away from the town it is known as Ming Xiaoling
Mausoleum.

Approximately six centuries
old, ravages of time are quite apparent. In any case, I found the
monument somewhat undistinguished. What was more impressive was the
Linggu Pagoda which, having been destroyed quite a few times, was
rebuilt again and again and the last reconstruction undertaken was in
1929.

It was first built in the sixth century AD and was destroyed in
warfare after about a millennium. It had again an Indian connection
as here, apart from Buddhas
and Bodhistvas,
Xuangsang (whom we know as Huen-tsang) and his relic were worshipped.

The Pagoda is reputed for
the beamless hall built centuries ago that was meant for worship of
Buddha. Much later, in 1928 it was converted as a memorial for the
30000 soldiers who lost their lives in the war of 1926-27. Speeches
of Dr. Sun Yat-sen are inscribed on the Pagoda.

A modern monument that was
shown to us was the Yangtze River Bridge at Nanking. Opened to
traffic in 1968 it was first ever massive double-decker bridge that
was designed and built entirely by Chinese expertise. It is a
rail-cum-road bridge, the upper deck is continuation of a highway and
the lower deck is for railways. The bridge facilitated and speeded up
rail traffic between Shanghai and Beijing.

The superfast Chinese trains
now thunder down to Beijing via Nanking through this bridge. It is a
massive bridge, more than a kilometre and half long. The Chinese
officials were justifiably proud of it. It was, perhaps, one of the
biggest projects undertaken by them until 1982. The Three Gorges Dam
on Yangtze and some more bridges on it were still in the future.

Nanking, in 1982, was
seemingly a quiet, small town. Roads were devoid of motorised
traffic, a few pictures of which I have placed in the album. We were
put up in a rather small hotel yet it had all the comforts and
beautiful grounds all around. The city, I understand, has markedly
changed after China’s “Great Leap Forward” into an economy that
is more capitalistic than socialistic.

It is now a thriving town
with industries (which were not there earlier), educational
institutions and massive urban expansion. There are high-rises galore
and, as happens in a booming economy, a large number of hotels have
come up, with some close to the Yangtze Bridge. The photograph below
of new Nanking (taken from the Internet) would show the kind of
progress it has made.